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october in bloom

Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day comes around on the fifteenth day of each month. Carol, over at May Dreams Gardens dreamed it up. If you visit her site, you will find links to gardeners all over the world, showing what is blooming in their gardens at the time. But first, please take a virtual trip through mine.

The leaves are bronzing up for the final show:

Would you believe that I picked up this Japanese maple at a yard sale for a mere $15?

The tree peony leaves are great bouquet fillers all year because of their beautiful shapes, but when they begin to color up like this, they can stand on their own in a vase or in the yard.

In the case of the Limelight hydrangea, it’s the blossoms that go from white to pinky-bronze as the days shorten.

Berries punctuate the landscape:

Gaultheria procumbens is sporting the red berries that follow the shy white bell-like flowers. Pop one in your mouth and recognize it as wintergreen.

My beauty berry is ‘Profusion’, a name it earns by producing lots and lots of pearlescent purple berries. If the wildlife deign to leave them alone, they will decorate the entry long after the leaves have fallen.

Quite a few perennials come on strong in late July and keep up the good work until the first frost.

Hellenium, or sneeze weed, is one.

Agastache is another.

And then there are the Dahlias. So often they are grouped together in a bed, where they come off as the floral equivalent of fruit salad (the canned kind, at that). I hope to develop the knack for using them as they did at Heronswood…as dramatic highlights in mixed borders.

A few divas arrive late to contribute to the garden’s swan song:

Next year, there must be more asters. This white one is from a friend, and has no further identification. The three foot high, shrubby plant has feathery foliage all summer, then erupts into a froth in early October.

Spiranthes odorata, still in its nursery pot, is a rare and endangered hardy white orchid native to North America. This is the sort of special plant to be found at the Hardy Plant Society fall or spring plant sale. The woodland will become an even more magical place if the ‘Nodding Ladies Tresses’, as these are called, agree to take hold and multiply.